I cannot even begin to tell you how many hours my family has lost to this game. Now, let me follow that up to say that none of us – me, hubby, or son – have every FINISHED the game. It’s that hard. However, it’s also super easy. At it’s heart, this is a match-3 game much like Bejeweled (which I probably should have included in this list, too…) .. but that’s about where the similarity stops. There are SO MANY facets to this game. Taming creatures, learning spells, fighting monsters, training your mount, forging new weapons, building your castle, leveling your character, and, above all, participating in an immensely engrossing story. And – even though most of those things involve doing match-3 puzzles, they all feel different enough – and challenging enough – that once this game gets into your head, it’s hard to put down again.

In all likelihood, this is a game franchise you’ve never heard of. However, it’s also one that took countless hours of time from my son and I on our Playstation 1. Initially, I put it on this game list for that reason alone- it clearly defines a large period of time that I spend playing games… but ultimately, I decided not to play it on stream. I truly couldn’t see it being a fun game for someone else to watch you play, at least – not for any full stream. Hence, I decided I’d write an article about it and leave it on the list, but not play it.

After-thoughts:

Well, let’s just say I didn’t even make it through one full day of playing this before calling it “quits.” It turns out, after all this time, the game was just too complicated for me to figure out on the “fly”. I was getting frustrated, and a frustrated streamer is never fun to watch… so I swapped games and went to play Megaquarium. I still hold fond memories of this game, but it’s been too long, and I completely forgot how “clunky” the user interface of this game was, and how utterly difficult the game was. Will I go back and play it again? Probably not. Will I still smile when I think about this game in the past? Heck yeah. Just not planning to play it again!

After-thoughts:

Playing this game again brought back SO many memories. Good ones, bad ones, in-between ones… it was truly a fun revisit. It honestly made me put this game on the list for a future long-play on my Twitch Channel. There is SO much to love about this game, and the game of the year edition I was playing (un-modded) seemed to be WAY less buggy than I remember the game being when I played it originally. Again, a game I highly recommend!

This game holds a major place in my heart, and I look back very fondly on the HOURS I put into this game in the past. It’s been a very long time since I played it, however, so this will truly be a trip down memory lane. In fact, initially, I wasn’t even sure I could include it in the Game Awards, because I had no idea whether I could find a copy that I could make work on modern machines – especially since there was, ultimately, a sequel to overshadow the genius of the first one (the second one wasn’t as fun, in my opinion). Luckily, I discovered that GOG has a version that does just that… which was quite a shock to me. I doubt most of you have even heard of this game, it’s that obscure. The game is set in a fictional Chicago during Prohibition, and really does a great job of making you feel like most of your gang activities must be carefully hidden by having an elaborate system of “front” businesses for each of your venues. In fact, one of my memories of this game is literally printing off page after page of the game manual and carefully cutting and gluing it together to make a real manual so I could have a better reference to figure out what can go where. (In fact, I think I still have that little booklet somewhere in one of my storage boxes… LOL..)

I have many vivid memories of this game. Most of which involved being frustrated at bugs… so I hope this dip into Morrowind won’t devolve into frustration over the same thing. This was the first time I was ever introduced to the Elder Scrolls Series, which is a series that has affected my gaming career deeply. I feel that ALL roleplaying games should have the quests crafted as lovingly as the Elder Scrolls does it. The unfortunate truth is, however, that most aren’t. Beyond that, the beautiful environments and world crafted by the Elder Scrolls teams have been amazing. You honestly feel transported to somewhere else, and are immediately immersed into this world that just.. feels REAL. One day, I sincerely hope to actually finish the game. And the next one… and the one after that. Maybe that can be next year’s project.

After-thoughts:

I didn’t remember how many and how long the cut scenes were in this game. While it’s not bad while you’re playing, watching it makes it really quite boring. Add to it that the second day I tried to stream it, we kept getting crashes… and this did not live up to my memory of the game, unfortunately. Would I still recommend this game? Sure, if you’re not streaming it! (LOL) Just be prepared to sit through a lot of long cut scenes… and play through individual boss fights a few times until you get it just right.

This is a game I got into just for the music, but I never regretted it. It’s based on the life and work of Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin. The story is fictional and fantastical, but uses his music beautifully. I have put many hours into this game over the years, and it’s one that I regret never actually finishing the game.

This game was an addition to the list when I found out I could stream from an Xbox… only to find out that this is one of the games that is NOT backwards compatible in the final week before this game was on the schedule. Which is what started a very hectic week of struggling to find some way, any way.. to actually play this game and get it captured so I wouldn’t have to find a game to substitute in for it. Eventually, we did find a way – but it was truly only luck that found it, because it wasn’t something we’d even thought of. I can’t even tell you the relief I felt when we finally got it working and capturable.

After-thoughts:

Okay, I’ll be honest here – I did not expect to have fun going back to this game after all these years. However, what happened was the complete opposite. I had SO much fun. In fact, I went back and let my tower run over night a couple of nights, so it’s all ready for another day of streaming at some time. In other words, if I find another game that doesn’t hold my attention, I could easily pull out some SimTower to replace the second day of that game. The game-play is still addicting, challenging, and engrossing. It 100% holds up to my memory of the game, and it was really fun to see how many people had also been hooked on this game at some point in their life. Expect to see this game return to the stream at some point this year! See below for the VOD of this game on youtube in case you missed the broadcast or just wanted to relive the fun!

To put this game into perspective, I started playing it before I was out of high school. It was literally one of my first video games that I was actually allowed to play…. and started my obsession with all games starting with the word: “Sim”. Although – looking back, I don’t know how I managed to have time to play it while doing all the things I did during high school (horse showing/training, usually more than one to two jobs…. on top of the usual high school grind and hanging with friends). Anyway… I am not the only person I know who was obsessed with this game back then. Hopefully re-visiting it won’t be too terrible!